m00kie

Right now everyone is in the middle whether they say anything or not... everyone has formed some kind of "opinons." I must say that most of those are on evidence that is not conclusive...

It does not mean that anyone should quit, but be patient until things calm down..

So whether in the heat of the moment I say that Anyone should quit! It is only my opinion, and lookign at what is happening there are those that I would like to say you should quit... The reason be because you are not contributing, and only creating hate and discontent... Many power users that are doing the Science are upset... I guess that at this point I also have to say I am a "power user," I am not looking at quiting...

I am looking at letting Seti Enhanced get here then we have valid "data" to look at...

In the mean time we all are standing on boxes and thumping our chests... I am Important "becaue." Realistically, if I look at the history of Seti. We all are replaceable... Over 5 million Seti Classic users that are not here is proof of that... That failing was lack of communcations...

Right now there are many Users that are Helping Users. That is what keep Seti going from that side...

Pappa

Seti@Home used to be a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Now, IMO, that is a secondary goal. The main goal now, for the most popular and successful distributed computing project ever, is to supply users for other BOINC projects.

Seti@Home doesn't have funding. They have been forced to ask us for donations, with which I was more than happy to help. BOINC, on the other hand, does have some funding and seems to be the main thrust of David Anderson's efforts nowadays.

Perhaps I'm a cynic, but I am starting to believe that Seti@Home wants to drive users over to other projects to further the commitment to BOINC which has overtaken the commitment to Seti@Home. I like to think of it as Seti@Home now being the farm team for BOINC and nothing more...

I have done my best to help Seti@Home and as such I will now do what they want me to do; I am slowly moving over to other projects. I may come back one day - who knows.

Thankfully I know where the door is so I don't have to rely on directions from Ageless, and not to worry, I won't let it hit me on the butt on the way out. By the way, that was truly one of the dumbest moves I've ever seen from a forum mod.

Thanks for all the fish ;)

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Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project.

I don't care what the credits are. Just don't tell me I've given time to the project and then tell me that because of a screw up on Berkeley's end which gave validate errors, as happens every time they shut down for maintenance, I get 0 credit for several WUs. That's all we ask for. Credit for the work we've done. None of the other BOINC projects I run treat their users like that. Never mind that one of my team mates' valid work (a portion) is classic SETI was discounted in the end and no one would get back to us to explain. Eric tried. Matt was "too busy".

So, tell me, as leader of one of the largest clubs, why do I tell my members to keep running this program? Many of us run Einstein or Rosetta. We don't see these problem with those projects. The administrators and developers listen to the users.

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Join Team Starfire
BOINC Chat

Pappa,
Thank you for your reasoned response. I appreciate that you are one of the few urging people to stay on and give SE some time.

I'm not cutting back on Seti because of the credit issue. I believe the credit issue is just a symptom of a bigger problem. I'm not getting more credits doing WCG or Rosetta, for example.

Nor would I ever think that little ole me is important to Seti. On the contrary, I know I have no say. There have been a couple of problems building for a long time. One is too many users on Seti tieing up all that equipment and bandwidth. The other is the need to get people to try other projects. Releasing SE with this credit system is the perfect solution. Fewer Seti users hogging resources and some users driven to move to other projects.

I do appreciate your efforts in urging people to stay on and your efforts in urging donations. You are a gentleman. I only wish others in this forum would follow your example.

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Proud member of Team Starfire World BOINC

I really do not want these "super crunchers" to quit and leave Seti either. But their attitude of "I'm gonna take all my computers and go home" is just childish. Some calm restraint while some research goes on in the background is exactly what is needed here. Perhaps there is room for improvement on the credit issue but research is needed first to identify exactly what.

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Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....

Kinguni

This is interesting, you state you do not care about credits. You do care about Validator issues... This is normally after an outage... That is a Problem worth "Fixing!" The hardware that is running Seti BOINC is Old... So besides the Database Backup, the weekly outage allows for updates and other things... I have quietly reported other issues associated with what you are talking about.

Now as far as projects ignoring what "users" say, all are guilty! It is because "we" users are stupid and they have a project to run... Who has time for any of the crap that shows up in the Forums? Over time there are "users" that become trusted and when an issue shows up they drop the issue into a listserve or a private email address that gets attention... Most Users never see these and do not care, nor should you... Cross Projects there are many people that watch and send alerts...

So if You have an issue, Please post it with as much information as you can... Others will insure that it gets relayed... and ask more question as needed...

I don't care what the credits are. Just don't tell me I've given time to the project and then tell me that because of a screw up on Berkeley's end which gave validate errors, as happens every time they shut down for maintenance, I get 0 credit for several WUs. That's all we ask for. Credit for the work we've done. None of the other BOINC projects I run treat their users like that. Never mind that one of my team mates' valid work (a portion) is classic SETI was discounted in the end and no one would get back to us to explain. Eric tried. Matt was "too busy".

So, tell me, as leader of one of the largest clubs, why do I tell my members to keep running this program? Many of us run Einstein or Rosetta. We don't see these problem with those projects. The administrators and developers listen to the users.
Now for this part, many of the developers try to read what is happening. They watch and after having been beaten up many times are caustion about what is said... I do not blame them... If something valid is said they look... They fix, and hopefully is is siliently delivered to your computer so it never happens again.

Being a realist, "we" need to move to new BOINc Core Clients and watch and listen... Unfortuantely, the silent majority are running in automatic... So the problem becomes the teams in a "credit race" now need to take responsibilty to insure that the members are getting the latest news... This also means taht they have to formulate strategy to keep the "team" moving ahead in the credit race... If they are not taking time to keep in contact they they are WRONG! Cjanges happen no matter what project! If Someone is not watching and reporting, They are WRONG!

scrape as I put my soap box away...

Pappa

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Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project.

m00kie

One of the things that was stated "long ago" is that with more users and more computers the strain on the old hardware was becoming too much!
So now Seti Enhanced looks more closely at each Workunit and reports the Results. This is also part of the transtion to where when a Result is returned that the "Real Time Analysis" is that this is good to look or is just noise...

At a point in time Seti Classic Pointed to Results that were "promising." Until they can get over 8 to Xpower results cataloged... Oh sorry that is in the budget that they asked our help for... And still keep things going... Then one of my favorite sayings come into play "Shit Happens!" Why it happened is to be determined... Responsibility gets assigned from there...

So over the years I have donated over a million computer hours... Yes with Seti BOINC it gets harder to prove... I still keep trying... I guess that is the Important Part!

So the stupid questions becomes is BOINCSynergy going to quit because of Credits? I think not! They kicked my butt in Seti Beta as at a point in time I (me) was the very close to the Top Teams all three of us (me, myself and I).
Now I am only number 8th, if you are in a Credit Race you missed the chance!

Pappa

Pappa,
Thank you for your reasoned response. I appreciate that you are one of the few urging people to stay on and give SE some time.

I'm not cutting back on Seti because of the credit issue. I believe the credit issue is just a symptom of a bigger problem. I'm not getting more credits doing WCG or Rosetta, for example.

Nor would I ever think that little ole me is important to Seti. On the contrary, I know I have no say. There have been a couple of problems building for a long time. One is too many users on Seti tieing up all that equipment and bandwidth. The other is the need to get people to try other projects. Releasing SE with this credit system is the perfect solution. Fewer Seti users hogging resources and some users driven to move to other projects.

I do appreciate your efforts in urging people to stay on and your efforts in urging donations. You are a gentleman. I only wish others in this forum would follow your example.

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Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project.

Just a thought, but next time a project wishes to update their application, instead of running a trial, should they just release it straight into the main project and issue a few percent of their units to test the new app.

The figures on BoincStats show that only 0.4% of the hosts registered on Seti bothered to register on the Enhanced trial. By allocating 2% of the units on the main site to new apps, five times more units would have had a chance of being processed and the database of units that could have been used to analysis the effect of credit with different hardware/OS combinations could have made a big difference.

From my own perspective, I would say that on Beta not enough low and very Low AR units, and possibly in other area's, were crunched and therefore there wasn't enough feedback to Eric K so that adjustment could be made to the credit formula before release here.

Andy

The figures on BoincStats show that only 0.4% of the hosts registered on Seti bothered to register on the Enhanced trial.

0.4% should have been more than enough for a good well planned trial if the data base they ran against was selected to include good samples from all ranges, especially the far extremes, and from quite to active and to known noisy areas. And that had known results (and errors) from the prior versions to compare against. If they just took random tapes there is no way to get a valid test. You only do that as the last test. Like Proofing any code as each part of it is written, a test has to examine and exercise all the possible boundary conditions, and you can not do that with just random selected data in a small sample.

The figures on BoincStats show that only 0.4% of the hosts registered on Seti bothered to register on the Enhanced trial.

0.4% should have been more than enough for a good well planned trial if the data base they ran against was selected to include good samples from all ranges, especially the far extremes, and from quite to active and to known noisy areas. And that had known results (and errors) from the prior versions to compare against. If they just took random tapes there is no way to get a valid test. You only do that as the last test. Like Proofing any code as each part of it is written, a test has to examine and exercise all the possible boundary conditions, and you can not do that with just random selected data in a small sample.

Unfortunately a largish proportion of those that signed for Beta were like the average person that signs up to BOINC/Project, downloads some unit(s) maybe completes one or two and then does no more. In the end my guess would be about a quarter did work regularly on a low resource setting, with no more that 200 users doing significant work. So in real terms probably got equivalent of 100 computers, mainly windows NT variants. Therefore the testing across ar range was limited, and things like the win9x timer problem was only seen on a few computers, occasionally, you might see it once or twice if you stop/start crunching 10 times. Thats why I dug out old P2 300MHz and Win98 to increase chances of seeing if it can be fixed. We are still testing. Had one unit that took nearly 100hrs to complete.

Andy

I will add further insult to injury... So while You Spend thousands on Computers! You can not spare $20.00 to donate to keep Seti Alive, now you are complaining that they are not doing what you want; I have less sympathy... Well, YOU are Killing Your "Cash Cow!" As the rest of the BOINC projects migrate to the "leveled playing field," I guess that BOINC Projects will take on a whole new look...

So once again, everyone take a moment to cool down!

Big assumption there poppa, considering that a large number of my team mates and members of other teams voicing their concerns are indeed donators. Many just elected not to advertise it with a little green star.

But I agree that EVERYONE, including the naysayers need to cool down. I have become so upset over the treatment we are receiving here that I have sent an e-mail to Dr. Dan Werthimer, Chief Scientist of Seti@Home, asking him to please have someone from the project moderate this thread and put a stop to the abuse we are getting. We only want to be heard by project management and have our concerns addressed and the treatment we are getting instead is deplorable.

@Daniel Schaalma,
Bud I am all for your 48 hour protest. I have some friends on another team who are also not happy with this and will pass the word to them as well. Just name a date and time and I am sure they can get the majority of their teammates to participate.

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I have sent an e-mail to Dr. Dan Werthimer, Chief Scientist of Seti@Home, asking him to please have someone from the project moderate this thread and put a stop to the abuse we are getting.

Abuse?

We only want to be heard by project management and have our concerns addressed and the treatment we are getting instead is deplorable.

The treatment you're getting is deplorable???
Have a look at your own behaviour & attitude.

*wanders off shaking head in disbelief*

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Grant
Darwin NT

I have sent an e-mail to Dr. Dan Werthimer, Chief Scientist of Seti@Home, asking him to please have someone from the project moderate this thread and put a stop to the abuse we are getting.

Abuse?

We only want to be heard by project management and have our concerns addressed and the treatment we are getting instead is deplorable.

The treatment you're getting is deplorable???
Have a look at your own behaviour & attitude.

*wanders off shaking head in disbelief*

The credit thing is on low priority i think.

It doesn´t matter.

I´ve 392058 cobbles would i be more worth if i had 2 million.
Dont believe it.

regards Mike

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

First off, I think the whole issue of credits, and those complaining about them, is pretty funny. I like getting credit, don't get me wrong, as it's both a recognition of the work I've done for the project, and fosters competition, which is fun in most cases.

However, credits don't get you anything. So, you're getting less credits than you used to. Big deal, so is everyone else. If the project management suddenly doubled the amount of credit they're giving out, it would have absolutely no meaning whatsoever, because everyone's credits would double at the same time.

My rac was over 24,000, and now it's dropping probably to the 10k range. I don't care, as everyone else's will do the same. My fast computers, once things settle down, will still be in the top 20, I'll still be gaining on the same people as I was.

What I can't understand even more is people and teams that aren't switching to enhanced until they absolutely have to simply because their credits will drop.

Xaak
Proud member of BroadbandReports.com Team Starfire

@Daniel Schaalma,
Bud I am all for your 48 hour protest. I have some friends on another team who are also not happy with this and will pass the word to them as well. Just name a date and time and I am sure they can get the majority of their teammates to participate.

If we are going to do this, in all fairness to the project, it will be best to wait for at least a couple of weeks to give the project time to settle out after just switching over the last of the splitters to enhanced. After things settle out for a couple of weeks, then we can select a date, and at 00:00 UTC on that date, disable our network access for 48 hours. Then a study can be done just to see the potential loss of everyone who cares about credit. The work processing will still go on, so nothing will be lost, and the important thing is that such a protest not do any harm to the project. But those to whom credits are important, will withold their results and communications for 48 hours, so everyone can see just how much work is done by the people that are very concerned about the drop in our credits. In the mean time, I'll work on a mission statement for the protest.

UC at Berkeley was the focal point of the "Free Speech" Movement and non-violent protests, back in the '60's, so this should be right up their alley!

Regards, Daniel.

Post on 'Your concerns about Enhanced' by Eric Korpela in the stickies.

Andy

Yes, but even with an SE result, on an optimized client, it can still vary between 45 minutes and 17 hours. Depending on AR of the result. And that is something the credit mongers don't like. :)

Thats BS.. it's not that WU's take longer to crunch nor that it's now based on fpop counting... it's about credit has been cut down.

Crunch3r I agree with you! - I also wonder how or why that Ageless - or is that Clueless got to be forum moderator - I thought it was the moderator's job to attempt to keep things civil. Instead he says stupid things like - "theres the door." I wonder if Berkeley knows what thier forum representative is acting like.
And Ageless, if you remove this post for no reason, other than you don't like it, - then shame on you and we should be looking for a new forum moderator.

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...snip... were calculated on a Sun box that did not reflect the FP characteristics of the most prevalent platforms used in SETI@Home, namely Windows and Intel based PCs (not to alienate Macs or Linux of course, but they also exhibit similar characteristics to the WinTels in this case). The results are credit returns that do not match up with what was intended (optimized or not)....snip...

I retract my previous passing of heresay from other threads about the Sun based calculations... based on Eric's new sticky thread this was obviously a false premise.

I do still stand-by my opinion that Eric and team should still continue to watch the data rolling in related to the Credits earned/given across the different platforms and adjust the credit calculations accordingly. Even if he did test on multiple platforms, the dataset would never have been as big as the wider project now that the 4.18 WUs have run out.

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It will matter to the projects, and to BOINC, if the level of credits/time for each project is not kept approximately the same. If not people who have no allegance to a project or are pure credit hogs, will switch from project to project, credit whore's or mercenaries in effect.

@Andy, how is being a 'credit hog', 'credit whore' or a 'mercenary' a BAD thing? Does (or should) Berkeley really give a rats ass about *WHY* people crunch as long as they get their work processed for free by people who in reality have a myriad of reasons *why* they devote their Computer's time (and the expenses involved for maintaining those computers) to this or any Distributed Computing Project?

There are 3 distinct groups (imho) involved here:

1. The people who do this purely for the science. No need to announce who you are because you've already said it long and loud enough so that we ALL know who they are.

2. The pure 'credit hog(s)', 'credit whore(s)' or 'mercenaries' who do it for the recognition of their peers, a sense of accomplishment or a sense of entitlement that they are proud of what they do, but not necessairly for the same reasons as those under #1 above....

3. The combination Science Geek AND 'credit whore' who loves the science, devotes large sums of time and $$$ to maintain their fleets and pay the electricity bills each month on the slim chance they will be the ones to find...'ET', yet feels like they deserve some kind of tangible recognition for their efforts..Since they havn't found any ETI's the next best form of recognition is....gasp!....credits/statistics/numbers, etc....

I ask again, does Berkeley really care which of these 3 types they have crunching for them?? I really do doubt that they do since without volunteers (no matter what their reasons are for participating) this project would be a pale shell of what it has been.

Berkeley needs all the volunteers it can get, and if making the credit system under 'enhanced' as favorable as it can be for those who invest their time, energy and money without complaint or expectation of anything in return except for a little recognition via a fair amount of cobbies, keeps them happy and crunching then I say....what's the harm?

Berkeley needs as many of us as it can get more then many of us need Berkeley which is a fact that seems to be all but forgotten in these message boards as of late. Without all of us, who will crunch the work besides the hardcore minority who would never run out of work because there would be so few of them for all the available work?

Making the 'enhanced' credit system more 'participant friendly' will not only make the existing users happy it will make the new users considering this project amongst the many out there take note that seti treats it's userbase fairly which can only be a good thing for all concerned.

Just my.02¢

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Hi,

There are 3 distinct groups (imho) involved here:

You forgot another group: Those who install the standard Boinc client and the standard science application and then just let it crunch.

*This* group is the majority. The credit calculation has to be adjusted to the majority. Otherwise SETI would claim a wrong amount of credits compared to other projects. And this group hasn't seen any change in their granted credits.

Regards,
Carsten

First off, I think the whole issue of credits, and those complaining about them, is pretty funny. I like getting credit, don't get me wrong, as it's both a recognition of the work I've done for the project, and fosters competition, which is fun in most cases.

However, credits don't get you anything. So, you're getting less credits than you used to. Big deal, so is everyone else. If the project management suddenly doubled the amount of credit they're giving out, it would have absolutely no meaning whatsoever, because everyone's credits would double at the same time.

My rac was over 24,000, and now it's dropping probably to the 10k range. I don't care, as everyone else's will do the same. My fast computers, once things settle down, will still be in the top 20, I'll still be gaining on the same people as I was.

What I can't understand even more is people and teams that aren't switching to enhanced until they absolutely have to simply because their credits will drop.

Xaak

I agree completely. I've been trying to stay out of this whole discussion, but I feel that I need to state my position. The thing is that my RAC did drop a little, but not that much. The reason? I have been spread out over 8 to 10 projects for awhile. Most (8 out of 10) have no optimized client that I can find, so I just crunch away. I saw the optimized clients as a way to return more work to the projects. The credits are nice, but its not that big of a deal. Like Xaak said, everybody is in the same boat.

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Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station. - Grand Moff Tarkin